Mostly smoothing out the choppy canon scene coverage. A few tidbits added as well.

Chapter Seven If there is such a thing as chaos in the regimented world of District Thirteen, I see it in the moments after someone finally cuts the feed, hiding the spray of blood on the tiles. Soldiers begin rushing around the room, diving at their computers, shouting meaningless questions at each other.

"What does he mean?"

"Is that a threat?"

They scurry around the room. I look at Coin, who has pulled something up on a computer, but is otherwise not reacting. She might be checking the weather.

"What's Snow trying to trick us into doing?"

"Get the files! Get the damned files!"

Finnick is trying to push his way over to me, and Beetee is furiously working at his controls again, trying, for some reason, to get the terrible image back. Gale Hawthorne is staring, dumbfounded, at the screen.

"It's treason! Cancel the deal!"

"Is it a hint?"

"He wouldn't say anything Snow doesn't approve!"

A movement catches my eye, a minuscule movement in the chaos, but the only one that matters.

Katniss, her eyes wide and glassy, puts her hand to her throat and takes a tiny step toward the now dark screen. I can see from here that she's shaking, and that, above all else, wakes me up.

"Shut up!" I yell.

It's probably just shock at the sound of my voice, but everyone turns in my direction.

"It's not some big mystery," I say. "The boy's telling us we're about to be attacked. Here. In Thirteen."

There's another burst of pointless questioning.

I feel my temper trying to escape its leash. It's closer than it's been for a long while. I've been in fights. I've fought my way out of the Viewing Center. But I don't think I've felt this murderous since the day Lucretia Beckett's Peacekeepers had Danny whipped.

I ball my hands into fists and force myself not to reach out and strangle the nearest questioner. I hear a strange, growling sound coming from myself, and I guess everyone else hears it, too, because they're looking at me like they've just remembered that I'm a killer. I hold my jaw tight. I can't help Peeta if I start killing them here.

"They're beating him bloody while we speak," I hiss. "What more do you need? Katniss" -- she looks up at me -- "help me out here!"

She shakes herself violently, like she's been gripped by a seizure. "Haymitch's right," she says. "I don't know where Peeta got the information. Or if it's true. But he believes it is." She blinks rapidly. "And they're…" She gulps in several quick breaths, but can't make herself say anything else.

I watch her for a minute. She's close to the breaking point, and I have to get her out of this. I shouldn't have asked her to speak.

I look at Coin. No one else really matters here. "You don't know him," I say. "We do. Get your people ready."

Coin looks up from her screen for it, at least, looking a bit confused by all the hullaballoo, as if the crowd was just over-excited about a sporting event. "Of course," she finally says quietly, "we have prepared for such a scenario." It's a perfectly Coin answer: Ignore the crisis to take the opportunity to praise her own systems. And then explain all of the reasons that it's probably nothing to worry about. A Capitol attack would be "counterproductive," and dangerous to the human gene pool. "And of course," she finishes -- and I am really beginning to hate of course as a mode of conversation -- "they invite a counterstrike. It is conceivable that, given our current alliance with the rebels, those would be viewed as acceptable risks."

"You think so?" I ask, but they don't really speak sarcasm here, and she treats it like a regular question, agreeing that she does think so, and that, at this juncture, it would be a good time for a "security drill."

I'll give Coin this: Once she makes a decision, it happens. There is no dithering, no time lost on style. Within seconds of the order going out over her computer, we are in motion. Boggs steers Katniss and Finnick toward the residential bunkers. I start to follow, but Coin's guards grab Plutarch, Fulvia, and me and usher us off in a different direction.

"I want to go with Katniss," I say. "She's in trouble."

"You'll be needed in Command," Coin tells me over her shoulder. "You know the Capitol as well as the natives." She looks at Plutarch. "Gather those beauticians and bring them to the Command bunker. If there's a bombing, we will retaliate. Any information on the Capitol may prove useful."

Plutarch goes off to follow his orders. I hope he thinks to check on Katniss while he's looking for her preps.

Fulvia seems pleased not to be going with the commoners. For a second, I hate them. All of them. I want to send them topside to be burned by the firebombs. Half of them don't believe Peeta, and the other half don't care about the price he's paying. Coin will try to parlay the whole business into heroism for herself if she manages to make a little stab at the Capitol.

I force it down. The anger hits me like white liquor on a cold night -- a burning coal of hate that spreads slowly out along my limbs. Then I think of Peeta. I think of his blood on the tiles. He's being tortured because he didn't want these people to die.

I owe it to him to keep it together now.

Our little group makes its way downward, through harshly lit hallways and dim staircases. We finally reach a large, cavernous room that must be directly beneath Command. The technicians rush to their stations and begin an elaborate routine that I have the impression is about disconnecting us from any topside power and communications lines. With a rush, Beetee is pushed into the room. I have no idea how they got him here in the wheelchair, unless there is a special elevator. The regular ones are shut down. It would be no good to anyone to be stuck in an elevator while the district is bombed.

Maybe someone carried him. It doesn't seem like a very Thirteen thing to do, but he got here somehow.

Beetee surveys the techs. "Good," he says. "There's a redundant communication line. We shouldn't be cut off for long."

"But we will be for a while?" I ask.

He nods. "The main communications equipment is well-hidden and actually far from the installation here, but a serious bombing could temporarily disrupt our remote connection with it. We'll be able to establish private communication again before we can break into the airways, though." He looks up at me. "Are they killing him, do you think?"

The question is so blunt, so plain, that I answer it without thinking. "I don't know," I say. "I didn't think they would. Not with Katniss here. They wouldn't have him to use against her. But this? I don't know anymore, Beetee."

Beetee looks like he's struggling for something comforting to say, but there really isn't anything, and he settles for sighing and closing his eyes.

An officer confirms that we are tracking several airborne objects approaching Thirteen at a rapid pace.

At the table, Coin is scribbling notes for an address to Thirteen. I go to her and wait for her to look up.

"Yes?" she says.

"You tell them who warned them," I say. "You tell them that it's Peeta Mellark who gave them time to get to safety. You owe him that."

Boggs runs in a minute later. Someone asks him if his wife and children are settled safely, and he says they are, and that he got Katniss and Finnick to the bunker as well.

"Has she stopped shaking?" I ask.

Boggs sighs. "I don't know. It was dark. She's still frightened."

I start to ask something else, but I'm not sure what it is. Instead, I sit down at one of the Command stations and cover my eyes.

Plutarch arrives last with Katniss's preps in tow, just before the doors lock. They look terrified and out of breath.

While Coin makes her announcement to the district, one of the young techs, who identifies herself as Soldier McCanley, settles us into an adjacent ward on the far side of the command bunker from Special Weaponry. It's lined with cots, each one of which has a foot locker under it with our supplies. The local soldiers try to direct us toward specific cots, but for the most part, we ignore them. Beetee, Fulvia, Plutarch and I get the preps to some cots near the back, and take four cots in front of them, to give them a little bit of a buffer.

Venia directs Octavia to try and get Flavius calmed down (he is all but hiding under his cot, and Octavia seems to have picked up a few yards of guts from hanging around with the Hawthornes), then comes over and demands to know what's going on and why they've been brought in. Plutarch is doing his best to explain when the first bomb falls, stopping everyone's conversations.

The power flickers for only an instant, but it's an instant of total darkness. I'm very aware of how far underground I am. In that instant, I imagine dying a miner's death after all, trapped here in an air pocket, breathing in the fine particles of the falling roof until I suffocate.

The lights come back on, and I go back out to the Command table.

Gauges beep loudly and repeatedly. Boggs is staring into a tube that leads, as far as I can tell, into the bowels of the machines.

He looks up finally. "Conventional," he tells Coin. "There is no residual radiation."

"Thank you, Commander," Coin says. She turns the public address system back on and reassures the population of District Thirteen that the blast was merely an explosive. She doesn’t report what I'm starting to see on the screens around me -- hidden topside cameras that show great, gaping holes in the world, flames bursting from the new trenches like volcanic eruptions in the night. Maps of the underground installation flash with red lights showing the damaged areas. Most of the old housing areas are lost immediately. If people had been in bed like good citizens, instead of rushed down into the bunkers because of Peeta's warning, we would have lost half the population with the first bomb.

The first night, we all stay awake for a long time, waiting for the next strike. It doesn't come until morning. By then, I am so tired that I don't even fight it when Boggs orders me to bed and tells me that I will be taking the night shift. I dream disjointedly about Lucretia Beckett, who is now in charge of District Thirteen. She has brought Peeta back from the Capitol and will forgive his crimes if he offers her a "private apology." Then he's lying face down in an apothecary that Ruth has set up in the bowels of Thirteen, and I am throwing things around uselessly. Danny reminds me that I paid his inheritance taxes, at least, then asks me what I'm trying to tell myself. Maysilee and my mother join him and ask the same thing. I make a few suggestions about just what they can all do with that question. I'm tired of it.

I'm not rested when Boggs wakes me up in the late afternoon to teach me to use the radiation detector and the long range scanners. I spot the next bomb ten minutes before it arrives. It is another conventional warhead.

Coin was right about one thing: Snow is not risking the total destruction of his prize.

Plutarch wakes me up a little earlier after my second sleep period. I have no idea anymore whether it's day or night. Coin is taking her shift at the scanners, and he keeps looking over his shoulder at her. "Can we talk?" he asks quietly.

"Sure." I sit up and rub my eyes. "What?"

"We've managed to re-establish communication with the outside. Contacted the districts -- there'll be a briefing." He looks around nervously. "I was able to reach my other contacts in the Capitol. One of them is Enobaria."

I frown. "Really?"

"Yeah. She's not one of us. Don't think she is. But her brother is a Peacekeeper who works as a guard in the prison. He's heard rumors about the other victors in the Capitol, and she is one of you. She looked for my other informants."

"Who do you have, Plutarch?"

I don't expect him to answer, but I guess he figures that he's trusted me this far. He sighs and says, "Three of my junior Gamemakers. I guess that wasn't too hard for her to figure out. Also, the surgeon who worked on Peeta's leg. Galerius. You remember him?"

I think back to the confusing days after the Seventy-Fourth Games, when I was shuttling back and forth between the kids, shooing the plastic surgeons away from Katniss and trying to figure out how to talk to Peeta about his leg. The doctors implied that they were connected to Plutarch, but I didn't know whether or not I could trust them.

Then I realize why Plutarch has brought the subject up. I sit up straighter. "You've heard something about Peeta, haven't you?"

"He's alive."

"I didn't think Snow would kill him. I hoped not."

"Enobaria says that he's being kept in the maximum security wing of the prison, along with Annie and Johanna. Her brother says that Annie is in fairly decent shape, but Johanna's been put through the wringer."

"Has the doctor seen him?"

"Not since the bombing started," Plutarch says. "But he was called to examine the leg before the interview. The circuits have been shorted out. He wasn't able to stand."

I close my eyes slowly, imagining the kind of electrical jolts it would take to do that. "What else?"

Plutarch shakes his head. "Galerius wasn't given time for a full examination, but he said Peeta seemed confused. Paranoid. He was in the hospital before for some kind of injection that he had a bad reaction to. We don't know what it was."

"If they kill him -- "

"I know. You'll kill them all. I believe you."

I don't know if that was what I meant to say or not. I don't know what I would do if Peeta died right now. He's one of the few completely decent people I know. He's more subversive than I ever dreamed of being, and he doesn't even try.

Ten minutes later, Coin calls a Command briefing. She has been in touch with rebel leaders in all of the Districts. Except for Two, where the Capitol is part of a long-standing culture, everyone has redoubled the war effort.

"It seems Snow miscalculated in showing the bombing," Coin says. "Instead of terrifying them, it's reminded them what will happen if we lose. In District Seven, he even lost a squad of his own Peacekeepers. It appears they've been there long enough that they've gone native. They turned on their own compatriots."

"District One actually rebelled?" Beetee asks, surprised.

"We did a different sort of 'We Remember' spot there," Fulvia says. "I took footage of their young kids in interviews, then showed what they'd been turned into by the Games culture, even when they won. Gloss and Cashmere's parents wanted Snow's blood already, and they led the charge." She smiles like some kind of predatory mutt. "It appears that their children came by their talents naturally enough."

Winnow Robinson has sailed up the coast and managed to make contact with Eleven. Their communications equipment is down, but the rebels have regained control. Six is in complete control of the trains, and they've gotten back-up to Eight and Nine. Ten has disarmed the Peacekeepers and sent their weapons to Five. District Four is preparing to send troops to District One to help get control.

"How far are we from control in Five, Eight, and Nine?" Boggs asks.

"The fighting is still too intense for estimates," Coin says. "Seven, as well, even with the rogue Peacekeepers."

She gives us casualty numbers. These are dry, factual statements. There are a lot of numbers. Thousands dead on our side. I ask about the Capitol forces. She seems confused by the question.

A tech reports a new bomb coming in, and we brace for it. This takes out a backup generator, and we lose power for a few seconds before another one picks up. Apparently, it also takes out a poultry farm, but I can't see any evidence of it from the cameras. The only ones left pointing in that direction have apparently been vaporized.

Later, I see Coin and Boggs questioning Katniss's prep team, with a map of the Capitol projected in front of them. Venia is refusing to participate, but Flavius is eager to please and Octavia is actually enthusiastic. Apparently, being bombed has not endeared the Capitol to her.

The day passes.

A bomb falls on the morning of the third day, while I'm at the monitoring station. It hits close to the Justice Building, and leaves some kind of pinkish-white residue behind. We can't identify it, but it doesn't set off any of the toxicity alarms.

There have been no casualties in Thirteen. The reports from the Districts are getting anxious about this. Is the Mockingjay alive? Did Snow manage to silence her?

"I wonder what they would do if we said she'd been killed," Coin muses. "It could really galvanize them."

A cold thought slithers into my brain: She means to do it. One of these days, when she needs them "galvanized," she'll sacrifice the Mockingjay on national television.

I force the thought back into the swampy, rancid land that it came from. If that's a plan, I'll get in the way of it. But it can't be the plan. It would be an awful plan.

"I don't think that would be a wise experiment," Boggs says. "She's unified them. Her death might galvanize them, but it also might fragment them again, and demoralize them. They love her."

Coin reluctantly agrees, and decides to wait until we've gone twenty-four hours without a bombing, then immediately establish that Katniss is alive and defiant. Fulvia gets to work writing a short line, which we will no doubt throw away. Reports from the residential bunker don't suggest that Katniss is in any place to give an extended performance after what happened to Peeta. Beetee is tasked with re-establishing our connection to the main airwaves in Panem.

I sleep, and dream of Peeta, unable to walk, while they do something to him that shorted out the circuits in a piece of equipment designed to withstand quite a lot.

I wake up unrested the next day to find the Command staff setting up a morning meeting. Boggs is gone, and I realize, for the first time, that the bunker door is open.

The bombing is over.

Plutarch is standing over a pot of what smells like very strong coffee, breathing it in like incense. Coin looks at it distastefully.

Boggs returns with Katniss, Gale, and Finnick in tow. Gale doesn't look any the worse for wear. Finnick looks shaken. Katniss looks like she's walking through a nightmare. Her fingers are swollen red for some reason. So are Finnick's. I don't ask.

I try to catch Katniss's eye, but she doesn't really seem to be registering anyone's presence.

She suits up as the Mockingjay after a brief strategy meeting, and we all go topside to film. She seems jittery and out there. I glance at Boggs and he nods. We put on a little pantomime about how much Peeta helped -- a true story, but one we're performing for her benefit -- and that seems to calm her a little bit.

Cressida decides to film at the Justice Building, to mock the supposed Capitol news reports.

"We should put a fake mockingjay up in the corner," Messalla says, grinning. "Just for old time's sake."

"We don't need a fake one. We have the real one." Cressida smirks.

Even from a distance, I can see the whitish residue left by the final bomb, but it's not until we actually get there that I see what it is: Dozens upon dozens of white and pink roses. The same sort of thing that littered Caesar Flickerman's set during Katniss and Peeta's last interview after their first Games.

Katniss recognizes it immediately and falls back, gagging at the stench, but she manages to rally. Cressida tries to press her to say something defiant. Anything. No one bothers trying to get her to follow Fulvia's script. They try Q-and-A. They try word-by-word recording.

But with each take, it gets worse. She keeps glancing at the roses. Her face gets paler. Her hands are shaking.

"What's wrong with her?" Plutarch asks.

Finnick turns to him. "She's figured out how Snow's using Peeta."

I close my eyes. It never occurred to me that she hadn't known. But now, she does. And she is completely undone by it. She stands at the center of a rough, awkward circle of us, shaking and hyperventilating.

Everyone reaches out to her, but suddenly, she holds out her arms to me and whimpers, "Haymitch..."

Suddenly, everything inside me seems too large for my chest. No one has ever reached out to me like that, not even my little brother before he died. No one has ever needed me for anything other than an occasional snide comment or a handy weapon in the arena. But Katniss Everdeen -- tough, hard-edged Katniss -- is reaching for me, saying my name.

I go to her and I put my arms around her, and I understand everything, everything I've ever heard people say about their children. I've called her one of my kids, been willing to kill for her before, but this is a different thing. All I want to do is hold onto her and not let anything hurt her ever again. I lead her to a fallen pillar, a little bit away from everyone else, and hold her while she cries.

"I can't do this anymore," she says.

"I know."

"All I can think of is... what's he going to do to Peeta... because I'm the Mockingjay!"

"I know," I say again. It doesn't seem enough. I feel like I should be able to give her some kind of advice. But all I can say is that I understand.

"Did you see? How weird he acted? What are they... doing to him?" She bursts into fresh tears. "It's my fault!" Something between a cry and a scream comes from her, and she pitches forward, tearing at her hair. "It's my fault, they're breaking him and it's because of me, because he loved me, because I need him and he's gone and Snow's hurting him..."

I try to hold her still before she hurts herself. "Katniss..."

"I need him. I need Peeta, I can't do this. I can't keep..." She stops talking because she's hyperventilating again, the air whistling in and out of her.

"Hold her still," someone says, and then she is limp in my arms, asleep, as a needle pulls away from us.

I gather her up and carry her to the tunnel that leads back down into Thirteen. Gale helps me balance her as we go down the ladder. The elevators are back in service ten levels down, and we manage to get her to the hospital. Finnick has trailed behind us, not speaking. I think he's all right when he tucks her into her hospital bed, but then Plutarch suggests that he go back topside to do a propo alone.

Finnick throws him across the room.

I don't know who finally manages to drug him, but whoever it was might have done well in the arena.

Once he is sedated and in his bed, Boggs looks at everyone and says, "Meeting."

"I'm not leaving," I say.

"Fine. We'll have it here." He gets on his communicuff and calls for Coin and other members of Command. They arrive within minutes.

"What has happened?" Coin asks, looking furiously at Katniss and Finnick. "Was there an attack on the surface?"

Boggs quickly explains the situation. "There's no way she can keep performing," he finishes. "Odair, either."

"She made a promise," Coin hisses. "She was given --"

I grab her shoulders and push her down into a chair. "You listen to me," I say. "This girl has done everything you could ask for, and more. And the boy -- the man -- she loves is paying for it in the Capitol. And what did he do? He saved half of your damned district, lady. You want your mockingjay back? You recover Peeta Mellark. It's not about a trade-off of services anymore. She's going to fall apart without him."

Coin squares her shoulders. "A mission to the Capitol is not a minor matter -- "

"It can be done," Boggs says. "I've been talking to Cressida and Messalla, and the cameramen -- well, the one who's not an Avox. They know exactly where the high security prison wing is. We can get Peeta Mellark and Annie Cresta. Plutarch? We have a Peacekeeper, don't we?"

"We have more than one," Plutarch says. "And two of my junior Gamemakers have been doing their studies in security. They have to know it to keep the arena secure. They'll be able to help with the break-in. We also have a doctor."

"That's a lot of covers blown," Coin says. "We're not ready for a full scale assault."

"It's not an assault," Boggs says. "It's just an extraction. We get the prisoners out. A small strike team would do it."

"I volunteer," Gale says, an unconscious echo of Katniss at the Seventy-Fourth reaping, and Peeta at the Seventy-Fifth. He is holding Katniss's hand. He looks up fiercely. "I volunteer, and if you don't send the rest of the team, I'll go alone."

"That's hardly necessary," Coin says coolly. "Very well. A strike team and an extraction of Peeta Mellark and Annie Cresta." She stands up. "And since we were unable to get usable footage this morning, Beetee, see to it that the strike team is wired for video. We'll watch it here, and when they get back, we'll show them infiltrating the deepest part of the Capitol."

"They'll retaliate against all the prisoners they have left," I say. "Peeta's preps. Portia. Effie Trinket. Caesar Flickerman. And Johanna Mason. I have no idea what they'll do to Johanna."

"We do not have the resources to save everyone," Coin says. "I wish we did."

I somehow doubt that. She may not wish them any ill, but I don't think she cares in the least if any of them die, as long as she can get Katniss back to her performance.

"We can't order anyone into this," Boggs says. "I want volunteers."

"I volunteer," I say.

Boggs shakes his head. "Sorry, Haymitch. But you haven't had any training that works for a coordinated strike team."

"I've survived the arena."

"This isn't the arena, and you can't get out of it by outsmarting it. You'll stay here. Help in Command, just like you would for Katniss's mockingjay shoots." He looks at me with something approaching respect. "And I think Katniss will need you here when she wakes up. I don't think anyone else will be able to get across to her what's happening. And remember -- Gale will be in the thick of it as well."

This is the end of the meeting. Boggs and Gale go off to recruit more volunteers, and Beetee to set up their video equipment. Coin goes off to do whatever she does when she's not looking down her nose at me. Plutarch sits with me for a while. "I'll run the op," he says. "I'm breaking my contacts' covers. I know they'll go along with it."

"What about the rest?" I ask. "Effie. Portia. Caesar."

Plutarch looks over his shoulder. "Once they're in the Capitol, I'm sure... let's say, that opportunities may present themselves. I'm sure no one would object if part of the team did find a way to get into the minimum security wing for Effie and Portia and the preps while the other part went to maximum for Peeta and Annie. And Johanna, who is also there."

"They'll mind."

"All right, yes. But they won't be able to do a thing about it."

He gives me an earpiece, just like the one I lectured Katniss about, and leaves for Command. I sit between Katniss and Finnick, waiting for them to come back to life.

Ugh, Coin is the worst. Even when she's not musing on the potential value killing off Katniss for PR purposes, she's just so officious it's awful. Your version seems so much more in keeping with the book version than the kindly(ish) one in the films.

I was really taken aback when Moore said she wanted to put some "warmth" in the character. I mean... why? Because she's a woman? The whole point of Coin is that she's as bad as Snow... and less warm on top of it, which is saying something!

Sorry for the brief comment this time around, but I want to get the typos in hopefully before you archive. :)

Soldiers begun rushing Not sure if this should be have begun or just begin?

probably nothing worry about Just missing a to before worry.

break the airways Think you may be missing a through before airways, at least if he's talking about breaking into the feeds etc. etc. And should airways be airwaves?

it's instant of total Just missing an an before instant.

doctor seen him? Just need a closing quote here.

Loved the Beckett/Coin foreshadowing parallels. And loved Haymitch's expanded reaction to Peeta's punishment; you did a really excellent job of making that proportional to the stronger bond you made in TLT etc. etc.

And just this chapter as a whole; I forget from chapter to chapter just how awful Coin can be, but the way you write their time in D13 as this rising, claustrophobically tense affair with no end in sight is just fabulous!

This chapter gets me every.single.time. And I love it. You bring out Peeta and Haymitch's relationship so beautifully in your trilogy; but it's especially this chapter that caused me to go back through SC trilogy to understand how much Katniss really does depend on Haymitch. She does speak of him semi-fondly; calls him family in CF, but doesn't really think about how much she depends on him. Her actions, of course, show differently. She runs to him first after there first games, she goes to him when she needs to talk. And here, even though Gale is around and has been her friend much longer; she turns to Haymitch. She thinks it's because he loves Peeta too, but it's more than that. Haymitch's reaction to this makes me melt. He feels so worthless, has felt that way his whole life, but Katniss needing him does make him worthwhile (in his mind). His crusty tenderness is absolutely what I would expect from a broken man who has found other people to not only love, but actually depend on him. Love, love, love this chapter.